- Islam Dwidar's classmates were still taking in her shocking
death - the teacher weeping outside before facing the girls, her closest
friend recounting how they walked to school together each day - when the
news arrived about Tahreer Abu El Jidyan.
-
- The two 15-year-old pupils at Jabaliya's school were
both shot in the head by Israeli soldiers inside their homes just a few
blocks and several hours apart. Islam died almost immediately after the
bullet smashed through her forehead as she baked bread with her mother
in their yard on Sunday. Tahreer is still on life support at a Gaza hospital
after an operation to remove shards of shattered skull from her brain.
-
- She lies motionless, with little to suggest she is alive
other than gentle breathing. Doctors do not expect her to survive.
-
- Tahreer's mother, Intisar, was at her bedside yesterday.
-
- "Oh Tahreer, my heart. I wish I were lying in this
bed, not you," she whispered to her child. "She was sweeping
the floor in front of the door," said Mrs Abu El Jidyan. "I was
standing talking to her. We knew the Israeli soldiers were around, we knew
they had snipers in the buildings on our street but we didn't expect what
happened. They just shot her in the head. Her brains spilled out. She said:
'Mum, I'm hit'. She praised God and she collapsed."
-
- There were two bullets. The first struck Tahreer in the
head. As she fell, the second hit the wall behind her. "I've no doubt
a sniper shot her deliberately. There was no fighting in the area. There
were no other shots, only the ones that hit Tahreer," said her mother.
-
- With her stood Tahreer's 14-year-old brother, Naser,
who was wounded by shrapnel last week. Israeli forces killed their father
11 years ago during the first intifada.
-
- Mrs Abu El Jidyan regrets preventing Tahreer from walking
to school on Sunday morning. She thought it would be too dangerous to venture
out of their home in Jabaliya's Sikka neighbourhood because it is on the
edge of the area occupied by Israeli troops and tanks last week. Snipers
are posted in buildings overlooking their street and a tank is less than
a block away.
-
- "I wouldn't let her out of the house but it was
dangerous at home too. When there was fighting, bullets came through the
walls. We stopped using some rooms on the side where the Israelis are,"
she said.
-
- Israeli and Palestinian human rights groups say that
about half of the nearly 80 people killed by the army over the past week
of "Operation Days of Penitence" are civilians. The military
says it has carefully targeted Hamas and Islamic Jihad fighters with missile
strikes.
-
- But while the numbers are in dispute - in part because
it is often hard to say whether youths in their mid to late teens are bystanders
or part of the Palestinian resistance - there is no doubt that a growing
number of children have been felled by Israeli snipers.
-
- At Islam and Tahreer's school in Jabaliya yesterday morning,
the headmistress, Rukaya Kamal al Budani, fielded calls from parents wanting
to know if it was safe to send their girls. "If they can get here,
it's safe," was her stock reply. But of 1,150 pupils, fewer than 200
turned up.
-
- Before word reached the school about Tahreer, Mrs al
Budani was getting to grips with the death of Islam.
-
- "This is our first casualty at the school,"
she said. "I don't know how to deal with the girls. It's going to
have a big impact on her classmates and friends. I'm shocked that no one
in the free world condemns the killing of a child."
-
- Then one of the male teachers tells Mrs al Budani about
the shooting of Tahreer the previous day. The headmistress sits in silence.
-
- Until June, the two young women had been classmates,
but then Tahreer failed her exams and was held back for a year. Asmaa Abu
Samaan walked to school with her each morning.
-
- "I met her in front of my house each morning to
walk to school. I did my homework with her. I keep thinking that if she
is brain-dead and not killed perhaps she is still suffering. I can't stand
it," she said.
-
- Asmaa walked to school yesterday morning without her
friend."I walked against the wall hoping the soldiers can't see me.
I want to go to school because I know the Jews do not want us to study
because we need to be educated to build our country," she said.
-
- But the killing went on as the conflict claimed the life
of another teenage girl in the Gaza strip yesterday. Palestinian medics
said Israeli soldiers fired about 20 bullets into 13- year-old Iman al-Hams,
including five into her head.
-
- The military said she had entered a forbidden zone in
Rafah refugee camp, and that she dropped a bag that soldiers feared was
a bomb.
-
- The Palestinians said Iman was walking to school when
troops entered the camp and that she dropped her bag as she ran away in
fear.
-
- The bag was not found to contain a bomb.
-
- Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited
2004 http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,2763,1320735,00.html
-
-
- Mr. Sharon On Killing Palestinians
-
- From Hugh Joseph
- 10-7-4
-
- When little Palestinian girls have become the favorite
targets of Israeli snipers, we should pause and try to remember how we
got here. Let's sit at the feet of Mr. Sharon and be instructed.
-
- "I don't know something called International Principles.
I vow that I'll burn every Palestinian child (that) will be born in this
area. The Palestinian woman and child is more dangerous than the man, because
the Palestinian childs existence infers that generations will go on, but
the man causes limited danger. I vow that if I was just an Israeli civilian
and I met a Palestinian I would burn him and I would make him suffer before
killing him. With one hit I've killed 750 Palestinians (in Rafah in 1956).
I wanted to encourage my soldiers by raping Arabic girls as the Palestinian
women is a slave for Jews, and we do whatever we want to her and nobody
tells us what we shall do but we tell others what they shall do."
-
- -- Ariel Sharon, the Butcher of Shatila and Sabra a "man
of peace", current Israeli Prime Minister, In an interview with General
Ouze Merham, 1956.
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